Covid vaccinations: The key to ending lockdowns
Accommodation operators are all suffering from shifting domestic travel restrictions and many are in dire straits without international visitors
Many industries have been hit hard by frequent lockdowns, but none have felt the effects so profoundly as hotel operators.
All around Australia, tourism and hospitality providers are feeling the financial losses of a long list of travel restrictions and border closures, leaving many wondering if there’s way out of lockdown.
“Tourism businesses are uniquely affected by metropolitan lockdowns as they don’t need to be in Sydney or Melbourne to have their business wiped out,” said ATEC Managing Director Peter Shelley.
Instead of making the most of peak tourism seasons, businesses are navigating cancellations and major financial losses.
Mr Shelley said: “Australian tourism businesses are not only suffering from the ongoing loss of international visitors. They are battling a consistently shifting domestic travel environment where people are losing confidence in their ability to go anywhere.”
Last week, the federal government outlined a national Covid transmission plan, and with hopes of travel in Australia’s future, Mr Shelley said that the Covid vaccine was an important step towards tourism recovery.
“We recently reached out to our members to check how they were managing vaccinations and found most staff have already been vaccinated, with many businesses offering time off for their staff to get their jab.”
“Without mass vaccinations, both domestic and internationally focused tourism businesses, worth more than $150 billion to our economy annually, will continue to be victims to stop-start border closures and localised Covid outbreaks.”
The vaccine, said Mr Shelley, is the only way to begin to build some stability for an industry that has been plagued by uncertainty since the pandemic began.
Similarly, Prime Minister Scott Morrison indicated that vaccines were the way out of lockdown.
“We have to take each step together, and that starts with walking in the door of that vaccine clinic and seeing that GP, that pharmacist, the state hub, and getting that vaccine,” Mr Morrison said. “Each step you take towards that is a step that Australia takes to where we all want to get to.”
Only with a vaccinated community can travellers begin to return to hotels and tourist venues, supporting some of lockdown’s worst-affected businesses. Vaccines, it seems, are the key to recovery for Australia’s struggling hospitality sector.
AccomNews is not affiliated with any government agency, body or political party. We are an independently owned, family-operated magazine.
